Monday, August 25, 2014

That time of year is back my friends, it is finally time to draft your fantasy football team (or seven if you're like me). It is well known that one of the keys to winning your fantasy league is identifying rookie talent. Rookies tend to be risky picks but for this reason they can also be valuable picks. Since it is once again draft season, here are 6 rookies that I love heading into the season:

Monday, June 2, 2014

How to Use1. Enter in the number of teams, roster settings and scoring type in the league settings table.
2. Begin drafting players. Type in the player name and click the "Draft Player" button.
3. If you want to make a prediction for the current pick, select your prediction type and click the show prediction button. Predicted picks are in italics.
4. If simulating a mock draft use the "Mock Pick" button to randomly simulate the next pick.
5. When your draft is complete select your team number and click the "Rate Team" button to export your draft to the Rate My Team Program.

Prediction Type Information Best available by ADP: This simulates picks for the current team by always taking the best available player according to ADP. The current team's roster needs are not taken into about using this method

Optimal One Pick Prediction: This prediction type predicts the best available player for your team by taking into account your roster needs and roster maximums to modify the ADP data. For example, if you only have one starting quarterback slot and you have already drafted a quarterback this predictor will not suggest that you draft a back-up QB until the later rounds of the draft once the value increases over other positions. While if you are in a two quarterback league all quarterbacks are significantly boosted until you fill your two starting quarterback slots because the predictor recognizes the increased quarterback value with these league settings.

Optimal Two Pick Prediction: This method is the most computationally intensive as it simulates the current teams pick as if that team were to draft the top QB, RB, WR, TE, K, or DEF then it simulates all of the pick between the current teams current pick and the current teams next pick by drafting the Optimal One Pick Prediction for each team. Then it suggests the player that resulted in the highest combined value over the two picks. If few picks are between the current pick and the current teams next pick then this algorithm increases in accuracy. An example of when this algorithm would be exetremely useful is for the 9th pick in a 10 team league as the predictor would only have to predict two picks between the current and next pick. So continuing with this example if the 9th pick team had already drafted 1 running back and 1 receiver while the 10th pick team currently had 2 running backs. In this situation team 9's two pick predictor would boost the ADP ratings of the wide receivers as player 10 is likely to pick up a wide receiver. Thus it will suggest that you take a receiver first over an equally rated running back as that running back is more likely to be available for your next pick. The other useful feature of this predictor is that it will easily recognize tiers. If the value at a position is going to drop between your current pick and your next pick then this algorithm will boost the value of that position.

Mock Draft Selections
Use the "Mock Player" button to draft a player randomly. This essentially uses Optimal One Pick Predictions with a random scalar added the original ADP data.

Save Draft
Use the "Save Draft" button to format a URL Link that can be visited any time to pick up the draft where you left off. The button opens your new formatted URL link in a new tab. Simply copy and save this URL address for later.

Rate Team
Select the team number that you want to rate and click the "Rate Team" button. This will export the desired team to Analyze Fantasy Football's Rate my Team program using a similiar method as the Save Draft feature. This includes predictions if the "Show Prediction" button has been pressed, use the "Hide Predictions" button before pressing the "Rate My Team" button to remove all future predicted picks.

Increase Text Size
If the text size is too small for you to read hold Ctrl and press + until the page is of the size desired. To make the text size smaller hold Ctrl and press -.

Have a question?
If you have a question about draft analyzer please leave a comment here and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Value based drafting can be an extremely useful metric when analyzing trends in previous fantasy football seasons for future use. For example, it could be used to gauge whether going RB heavy last year (as many suggested) really was a good strategy or if this line of thought was flawed.

This metric essentially compares each players point total to the point total of a baseline player for each position by subtracting the baseline players point total from each players point total. When using value based drafting the most important factor is the method used to pick the baseline player at each position. This article chooses its baseline players as explained in this article. Essentially the baseline player for each position is set to be the average number of players drafted at that position in the first 10 rounds of the fantasy football draft.

For example, if last year on average in a 10 team league 40 running backs were drafted in the first 10 rounds then the baseline would be set to 40. The baselines used for this example are based on 12 team leagues and on average: 17 QB's, 43 RB's, 40 WR's, 12 TE's, 6 DEF's, and 2 K's were drafted in the first 10 rounds of a 12 team draft thus the baselines were set at 17, 43, 40 and 12 respectively (DEF's and K's were neglected).